Tag: Christian

This has been in my drafts since April and I feel like it is finally time to share this with you.

The whole purpose of this blog was me Finding God’s Grace in the struggles. Well, I’ve been struggling some over the past couple of months and I think I might have just found that Grace I keep going on about. The enemy may have tried at taking me but he will never have the victory he may try to declare over my life.

I can remember the experiences I had at church as a child. I was, and still am, a worshiper; it’s always been a part of me and I believe that, along with God’s purpose, is why I am still here today. I remember standing with my best friend at the time when we were eight years old, dancing and singing before the Lord with smiling faces. We didn’t fully understand how happy we were making our Father but the joy we had was so pure that I believe that He was oh-so proud of his daughters.

From the age of seven to about thirteen I went to church fatherless. There once was a time when my father, a true man of God who has a deep passion for what God called him to do, left the church. He stepped away from the place where his parents taught him to serve the church and men/women of God in his life. There once was a time when my mother, now the children’s minister, wasn’t going to church due to the fact that her husband wasn’t and was too tired to get up in the morning. There once was a time when I would get up every Sunday and ride with my grandparents to and from church, stopping for an Icee and a Twix after evening service and going home to my parents who had once experienced the same joy I was experiencing. This hurt me, deeper than I knew at the time. I can remember standing in my parents room, crying and begging them to come back to church. Not having the average southern family aspect of going to church every Sunday was something that struck me from a young age, but I didn’t realize that for my work to be done, I needed this pain…(But we’ll get to that later.)

There once was a time where my best friends in the church left. One by one, them and their families stopped coming to services and therefore taking my cherished friends with them. People moved, they found something more “current”, something that made them feel “good”, they left something so great behind. Sometimes I felt like screaming to them, “NO! STOP! You’re making a mistake. Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go!”, but I was only a child, and age means everything in an adult’s mind.

I was very involved in my church as I grew up, I worked in many different ministry’s that would affect what God would call me to be in His Kingdom. I worked in Children’s, Music, and Youth ministry’s around my church and settled my heart deeply into the Kingdom. I followed the doctrine, I followed the standard, and I lived happily and purely. Life seemed too good to be true when my parents began coming back into church and digging themselves into their calling and ministry’s. I remember crying the first time I saw my dad raise his hands in worship and I remember when heard my mother speak in tongues as she wrapped her arms around me and my sister. I was ecstatic…Then I got into high school.

Freshman year I dug myself into on campus ministry’s and challenged myself in the Kingdom. I became part of my state’s worship choir and a drama team for the Louisiana district’s Kids Kamp. I would attend NAYC, a youth congress for the UPCI youth in OKC, with my youth group. I met people who loved God and our organization just like I do, these people are my life time friends who I love and cherish and will be by my side though the thick and thin that would be coming very soon. I met mentors, people who would shape me and my ministry’s, women and men of God who I look up to dearly.

Sophomore year went by with a few bumps and bruises. I became lenient with my relationship with God and often left it to the side as I began to make more friends that would ultimately lead me down roads of destruction and chaos. In this year, I lost my best friends in the church and was outcasted by my youth group. This led to a year of hurt and pain and confusion that I was endlessly trying to dig myself out of. And how I dug was with the things of the world, to fill those empty wholes I felt from slowly pulling myself away from the church. I kept getting closer and closer to what the enemy wanted for me and farther away from what God wanted for me. I kept putting off my relationship with God till “camp season” the time in summer where all the church camps were put on, leaving a whole nine months of doing whatever I wanted on the weekdays and living deeply for God on Sunday’s to keep up the “platform” image.

After a summer of camps and travel, I decided that I was going to live for God with everything that I had in my body. I was going to live with the standards and doctrines I had grown up in…Until junior year hit…

There once was a time where I wanted to drink alcohol, as some would say, I was “flirting with the world”. There once was a time where I didn’t have Godly friends pushing me to be a better Christian, they were actually pushing me in the opposite direction. I dressed like everyone wanted me to dress, I spoke how everyone wanted me to speak. I even took a step to becoming the Christian that everyone wanted to see out of me. I was turning into a robot for the world, like a vending machine that would spit out what someone wanted from me. There once was a time where I was two different people; one Kelly went to church and one Kelly went to the world. There once was a time where I gave up on my calling. I knew that if I just gave my all to God, everything would fall into place, but I kept putting off the relationship because I knew summer was coming.

Even with summer fast approaching, the enemy still was trying to get me to finally call it quits. The conviction that was in me was unsettling and the feelings I had about what I had been doing for the past year and a half were changing. I would end up losing my school friends, even though I was doing everything in my power to keep them. I would end up slowly gaining back my church friends, and my youth group began taking me back in. Even with the enemy trying to fight me with my worldly life, my life with God was seeming to start to take back over.

There once was a time…And then there wasn’t.

I was back. A youth event for the Louisiana Youth set me back on my feet. I realized that I didn’t need anyone else but me to get right with God, and He knew I only needed my strong-willed self to get through this valley. We all go through dry seasons, and without this one I wouldn’t have what I have now. I feel stronger in God. I feel hopeful for the future. And most importantly, I feel overwhelming peace that is so, so calming.

I don’t know why God decided to keep my family. I don’t know why, when my mother asked my father if he wanted to attend other churches, he replied with “If I’m not going to my church, then why go?”. I have no idea why after six years of riding with my grandparents to church, one day, my dad decide it was time to come back. I have no idea why God placed my parents in the positions He’s placed them in, and I have no idea what his purpose is for my family. I don’t know why God kept me, even after all the sins I committed. I don’t know why I’ve made it this far in life, it’s been a pretty rough two years for me and there have been times where I didn’t know if I could keep going. But, I do know that the simple answer behind all these “I don’t know”s is God’s unbelievable Grace.

When I was just two weeks shy of being sixteen, my youth pastor asked me to put together a small five-minute message on anything I wanted. So I spoke on God’s Grace and called it “Grace: The Unspeakable Gift”. Now for a fifteen year old it was a great message, but as I look back a couple of years later, I notice that I wasn’t fully capable of talking on such this subject. I wouldn’t be able to do that message justice for another couple of months, when I really learned of God’s true and unspeakable grace. I don’t think I’d be able to do it, even after a few months. But, two years later, when I was seventeen and had learned of true loneliness, that’s when I would be able to talk about what God’s Grace can do for someone.

I had lost everything. My friends, my voice, even my feelings were gone, and then my spiritual drought would begin. My spiritual drought took everything after me, and it began once I stepped back into my high school for my Junior year. I began saying things that Christians, nonetheless ladies, should NEVER say. And I felt terrible, a spirit of depression began sneaking into me because of the conviction I felt every Sunday when I walked into church. The conviction should have turned me around but… It didn’t. And now I know why…God was getting ready to teach me a lesson on patience, vulnerability, and a lesson on losing myself and finding Him through the chaos.

This is my testimony of His great love keeping me. I don’t know why, but I’m grateful.

Let’s be real for a minute. Life is pretty shocking, you never know what curve balls will be thrown your way, but I’m pretty sure my life is an advocate for curve balls. Like, if there was a tutorial for how to throw a curve ball, my life would be the sponsor and/or used in the video. I’ve gone through some ups and some downs but, hey, that’s alright. Sometimes you need those ups and downs to get through life. As a favorite song of mine says, “learning through the downs, living for the ups” and that CANNOT be more true when it comes to life. Just in general. Life can be scary and crazy but that’s okay, it’s supposed to be like that. If you weren’t scared about the future or just life in the present then I’d be a little worried about your sanity. But even though life is scary, that doesn’t me we can’t enjoy it!

I’ve always loved life. I’ve never been ungrateful for God putting me on this Earth because I know that God has an insane, epic purpose for my existence. And, you know what? That makes me SO excited for the future. Some people don’t exactly feel the same way, or see life from this perspective and what I have to say to them is that I hope they find their true happiness and love in this life. Life is hard but, in the wise words of Kelly Clarkson, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger! I get it, like I said earlier, life will throw some curve balls but that’s only one strike out of three. Give those other curve balls your best bat and if you strike out, guess what…There’s another chance for you to bat later in the game!

If you know me personally, you know that I’m all for a party and I can be the life of one if I feel like it. But sometimes, that isn’t the case. We all have these moments where life just gets us down, and I’m not saying to just lock yourself away for days and days on end. Sure, take a day or maybe two off from “doing life” but look at it this way, you don’t have to stay sad. Look at the beautiful things that God placed on this Earth and just remember to breathe. You WILL get through this, there is so much more to life than what you’re feeling now.

But now for the shocking part:

You don’t have this ‘under control’. Sorry to burst your bubble but, nope, you’ve got no say in this. But I know someone who does and I’d rather Him be holding down the fort than be struggling to keep the tent from flying away during a storm. You don’t control how your life will go. You don’t control how people feel about you, what people think about you, or what they do about you. They could talk about you in the worst way and there is no way for you to know, or for you to rewind the conversation and to fix what they said into something sugar-coated and pretty. That’s not how life works, but you’ve got something on your side that is WAY bigger than your mountains. The minute you give your mountain to God is the minute you can stop stressing over climbing it, because He’s already got it conquered.

I’ve been listening to this song a lot. And not just because I found this guy who is kinda cute (and can sing “The Anchor Holds” with some kinda fire), I started listening to this oldie goldie a while back but have just recently REALLY listened to it.

When I first heard this song, I was asked to sing in a group for a homecoming service for a local retired judge. I learned the soprano part assigned to me in 2.7 seconds, did the service, and went on with my life. The song has always just kind of popped up here and there, my papaw would sing it with his southern gospel trio or just here is randomly come on while I was listening to my worship playlist. The significance of the lyrics always hit me in a certain way, but I wasn’t truly affected by them until recently.

A good friend of mine asked me to sing for a talent show, mentioning that I should look up a male judge that would be helping out with the event. So I did. I found multiple videos of this certain young man singing southern gospel songs I had heard all my life. But when I came across him singing this song in particular, I couldn’t bring myself to click on the link. I knew it would be heard to sit and listen to a song that basically told me that God’s got this and that is I hold onto Him I will make it through this, even though I had been telling myself these things for months. I was struggling with these huge mountains and troubling storms for a long time when this cover came into my path and it was almost like my mind was telling me that if I listened to the song I would be letting go of things that needed to be let go of. So I scrolled over the song and went back to diving deeper into a whole that led me further into a batch of oldie goldies but the video kept coming up.

I held off till I was at my lowest, even if I didn’t realize it at the time, and I finally caved. I wasn’t even looking to listen to that certain song, I was actually searching a song from a completely different genre but I guess God has other plans. I clicked on the video and began to listen and it took me back. WAY back. Every lyrics sent me reeling into memories that were harsh and cruel and unwanted but were memories needed, nonetheless. I think my favorite part of the song is the verses of the song, if you aren’t familiar with the song then here are the lyrics:

I have journeyed through the long dark night,Out on the open sea, by faith alone,Sight unknown; and yet his eyes were watching me.

I’ve had visions, I’ve had dreams;I’ve even held them in my hand.But I never knew they would slip right through,Like they were only grains of sand.

I have been young but I’m older now.And there has been beauty these eyes have seen.But it was in the night, through the storms of my life,Oh, that’s where God proved His love for me.

These lyrics really hit hard for me, and each verse seems to really tell a story that comes out of all of our lives. We are desperately in search of something to keep us going, something to hold us firm in our faith. When we feel like no one can see us in the darkness, when dreams fail, or when we see the wonderful things of life or the bad things, He’s there. He’s always watching. And for some reason, I couldn’t get that through my thick skull, that God was seeing my pain and my hurt and was holding me with the toughness and unbelievable strength of an anchor.

Have you have watched a movie about a big boat with a HUGE anchor, and the anchor ends up sinking to the bottom of the sea and NEVER MOVES. All it does is sit there and rust. Also, when the anchor first dropped into that sand in the bottom of the body of water, it kept that ginormous boat in place; no mater the wind, no matter the weight, that boat wasn’t going anywhere.

The anchor holds,Though the ships been battered.The anchor holds,Though the sails are torn.I have fallen on my knees as I face the raging seas.The anchor holds in spite of the storm.

Matthew 7:24-27 says, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” and in Hebrews 6, the Bible says, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”. God is our heavy, unwavering anchor, that no matter the situation or devastation, He’s there to hold us in place. So what if we get a little beat up along the way, so what if we get pushed and tugged, He’s got us in place, He’s holding us. This scripture says that He is the solid rock on which we stand. He is our hope that hold us, even as we fall.

Earlier this week I tweeted something along the lines of “The moment I gave my mountain to God was the moment I stopped trying to conquer it on my own”, and I didn’t realize just how true that statement was until after I tweeted it. The moment we give our all to God, the moment we let his hold us and take care of whatever is going on in our lives, is the moment that we stop doing all ourselves. That lesson is so simple, we start doing it when we are babies. If I give this bottle back to mom then I don’t have to hold it while I play. It’s as simple as that.

Our God is such a strong God, and He is so willing to help us with whatever it is we have that’s putting the word on our shoulder. He’s got the whole word in His hands, so why do we have to feel like it’s on our shoulders. He doesn’t give us anything that can break us.

Life is full of maybe’s. And through out my life, I know that I have probably used “maybe” as an answer to more than a dozen questions that come up day to day. But the funny thing is that the word “maybe” makes me unbelievably anxious.

When God decided He had a purpose for my life and began making me, He must have skipped out on the bottle of patience because I have none. You can ask my mom, my best friend, even my English teacher could tell you my patience is at an all time low. So whenever something comes up and people reply with “maybe”, my mind goes wheeling into impossible theories as to why they wouldn’t want to answer whatever I asked with a straight yes or no. Here’s about what my mind looks like-

“Oh, they said maybe…It could happen…Or it could not happen.”

“Well, they said maybe. I’ll have to wait and see.”

Recently, I had some kind of thing with this guy. I’m saying a thing because I have absolutely no idea what I’m supposed to call whatever happened with this guy. On multiple occasions I would suggest that we hang out (you know-go eat, see a movie…Just normal friend stuff) and his answer would always be a “maybe”. Of course, I wanted more out of this thing than he EVER did and I, being me, was actually trying to get him to ask me on a date. {Side Note: A guy should pursue the girl, not the other way around. If he doesn’t have the guts to ask you out, don’t bother with trying to flirt your way into a relationship. But that’s another story for another time.} That little two syllable word would give me SO much hope for what I was hoping to come out of the thing that was going on. And when we talked about what we were looking for I brought up the subject of us and if we would ever be more than friends and his answer was just the same as always…

Maybe…

I pondered over this “car talk” for days. I just kept telling myself that in a few months this guy would be taking me to prom and we’d be dating and we’d meet each others parents and we’d have a merry-go-lucky time together. I thought that this maybe was going to lead to the greatest year of my life. Well, guess what. It didn’t. That maybe led to absolutely nothing. Because some times maybes aren’t meant to be.

But hey, I know that there’s going to be another maybe out there someday that will end up being a yes. And between you and me, I’m way more excited for that maybe than I ever was for this one.

Another example of a time where I learned about my indifference with the word maybe was when I was fourteen.

I was searching endlessly for my calling from God. And this was in the dead middle of church camp season, so I was getting my Jesus on and basically repeatedly asking God to tell me what He wanted out of my life. Then, one day during this camp season, my youth pastor at the time sat down with me in the tabernacle of the camp grounds and told me that MAYBE why God wasn’t revealing the things I wanted was because I was to blinded by all the distractions in my life.

WOAH, WOAH, WOAH. HOLD UP. Distractions? Like what?

Oh…Yeah…That boy you’ve been obsessing over that is WAY too old for you but you’re going to like him anyways. Oh, and that one thing that you don’t want to tell yourself is a sin but it clearly is…THAT’S what he meant younger Kelly.

This maybe angered me and it upset me. How dare the man of Godly leadership in my life challenge my heart! How dare he notice that I wasn’t making the smartest choices, then come and tell me that what I’m doing wrong is causing my relationship with God to falter! (Can you hear the sarcasm in the older, wiser Kelly’s voice?) This realization made me bitter, and completely give up on the idea that God had a bigger purpose for my life. But thankfully, God didn’t give up on me.

So with all this being said, I believe that maybes are meant to give hope. Maybes are there to encourage. Keeping that in mind,and going back to my youth pastor story, maybes can also be something that can tear people down. Maybes can hurt people and cause stress or anxiety. I certainly get impatient when people tell me maybe and then don’t get back to me as soon as possible. Yes, patience is something I need to work on but, one lesson I’ve learned through the years is that if you pray for patience God is just going to throw you as many things as he can to help you get that answered prayer.

*Cue flashbacks of teaching a kindergarten age Sunday school class*

We also have maybes about what we want to do. Whether it be day to day or really life changing decisions.

With me, the topic has been school/the future. Am I going to major in music?Maybe.Am I going to go to a Christian based college?Maybe. Am I going to get married by 25?Maybe. Or it’s something stupid, like everyday situations. Am I going to eat Mexican for dinner?Maybe.Am I going to get in bed before ten?Maybe.Am I going to wear my hair up today?Maybe.

Every day we make maybe an answer to a question that we won’t know that answer to till later, or an answer to something we WANT to put off until we HAVE to find the answer. In the long run it will be better to give ourselves or others a definite answer.

So the lesson I’ve learned from maybes is to not rely so much on them that I:

A. Get my heart broken and smashed into a million pieces.

B. Miss out on all the wonderful things God has in store.

Or

C. Live a life full of maybes, but never find the yes or no answer.

“Let your hope keep you joyful, be patient in your troubles, and pray at all times.”

I’ve heard this phrase since I was a little girl. It seems to have come into almost every conversation I’ve had with my mom since I entered middle school. At first, little naive me didn’t know what Momma Cole was talking about, nor why none of the boys in my grade ever wanted to “ask me out”. {I’m not sure why I believed that I could be “taken out” in middle school but that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.} I’ve been sick the last couple of days, and as I laid in bed surrounded by Gatorade bottle and tissues, I began thinking on this subject.

Boys will be boys has come up in social media a lot over the last couple of years. The young women who speak against this phrase shout their opinions loudly but what I think about this phrase is totally different than what these young women are screaming about. I believe that the phrase “boys will be boys” is a way to explain what just how immature, and ever changing boys feelings are, not MEN but BOYS. There is a difference, and I bet all the twenty-something year old women know what I’m talking about. Men are courageous, men truly know how to treat the women in their lives, and men are servants in God’s kingdom. Boys are arrogant, boys are wishy-washy, and some boys are still trying to find their place in the kingdom.

Earlier this week I went to a funeral with my grandparents and my mother, it was in Bossier City and I wanted to look my best considering I would be seeing people I haven’t seen in months/years(not to mention a boy or two that I had crushed on). I worried about how my hair looked and how my shirt was wrinkly, I wanted to show just how pretty I wanted to be for these people. My grandparents, mom and I walked into the church; my head held high and my shoulders rolled back. As the visitation went on, countless member of our extend family, and people in our church who had made the hour and fifteen minute journey to BC, expressed to my mother and I, how beautiful I was. I would thank them, with a smile and a slight blush, but a thought was itching to escape my lips, so I asked mom once we settled into out seats.

“So, why do so many men say that I’m beautiful, but boys have never even looked at me like that?”

I thought this over. I thought long and hard, even on the way home it raced through my head. So am I pretty or not?

I would like to hope that the answer is yes, but why? Why after never having, but maybe one or two, ever tell me they liked me? The answer to this is very simple.

The God who created me sees me as the most beautiful thing He has ever created. He has clothed me in strength and dignity, He has given me the courage to laugh without fear of the future, He says that I am far more precious than rubies or any jewel, and He loves me…Endlessly. So, why should the thoughts and actions of any boy change that? Why should I feel inferior when I have a God who created me with a purpose for my life in mind?

God is making me into a Proverbs 31 woman for the Job 29 man who will come into my life. And I, without a doubt, know that my man of God is out there waiting for me; my mom has prayed too many prayers for my siblings and I to have Godly spouses, and I have prayed more prayers than I can count on all twenty appendages for him and his walk with God/his walk towards meeting me. But until we meet, until we become whatever God has in plan for us, there will be boys who come in and try to sweep me off my feet; until we find each other, there will be boys who sweet talk their way into my heart, and there my even be men who try and take me away, but God’s plan is always greater.

A boy’s idea of me, and how he “rates” me, will never overpower the fact that God claims me as one of His beautiful daughters, and why would He give one of His daughters away to someone He wouldn’t know is perfect for me, someone He didn’t know, someone who isn’t going to draw me deeper into His grace and His plan? Why waste your time on boys who are really just frogs when God has a prince waiting out there for you on a white stallion, ready to save you from the world of boys?

Boys will be boys, but one day they will be men. They will grow into being courageous, being the man that treats the women in his life with love and respect, and being the servants that God has called him to be in His kingdom.

You know when life decides to say, “Hey! I know it’s going good right now, but here’s that curve ball you didn’t see coming!”. Yeah, my life decided to do that to me this week.

When I began high school, a couple years ago, someone told me that my friend group would change. I didn’t believe this person AT ALL, but looking back now, I finally see what they were talking about. High school is a time of growth and a time of finding out who and what you are in the huge world we live in. It’s not necessarily a time to find your bridesmaids, though I have a friend or two that I know will probably end up standing beside me at the altar, or a time to find your soul mate. For some, maybe. But for me, it’s just not going to happen.

It was hard to realize this at first. On Monday of this week my life seemed to be a-okay, other than a few things that had been reeking chaos in my brain for a few weeks, and I continued on my merry way. This was until I made the wrong decision to get to the bottom of what had been troubling my mind, and that’s when all of hell broke loose.

Do you remember when you started making friends in Pre-K? You could just walk up to someone and then automatically be best friends, and they seemed like they would be your best friends for life, but time went on and you would separate? That’s what happened this week, but on a larger and older scale. I guess God decided that it was time to throw one of those curve balls. But let’s get some background, shall we?

A little over a year ago, I had what I like to call “The East Wind” come in. I was broken hearted, but I survived. And I just felt like I knew that God would never do something like that to me again because my lesson was learned. Flash foreword a year later and about the same thing is happening that had happened the previous year. But this time it’s different. This time it’s like I have no one to go to.

Why was I such a bad person, what had happened to make me become something that someone would want to push away? I understand that God gives you lessons to learn from but goodness gracious, He had never sent me something like this.

But I know, that in the midst of the trial there will be doors opened, doors that will lead me deeper into the grace of God.

So what’s the whole point of this blog I’m starting up? Why, all of a sudden, do I feel like it’s time to get all this stuff out of my head and typed onto a desktop? It’s simple really, I want to write down what this crazy adventure we call life leads me to. I want to document what God is doing and what His future for my life holds. So that’s why this blog is called Finding Grace, because I am taking y’all with me on the ride of a lifetime.